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Syrian Novelist Khaled al-Khalifa on a Possible US Strike

By mlynxqualey on August 29, 2013 • ( 9 )

Syrian novelist Khaled al-Khalifa posted this statement on his Facebook page. Translation, with slight editing, Lina Sinjab:

“Dictators bring invaders; this is an indisputable fact. Invaders never brought freedom to people, and this is another fact that we shouldn’t forget. But what we should say at this very crucial moment of our lives and the life of our revolution is that the dictators are not the only ones who brought invaders, but that they contributed to that a group of politicians and revolution-traders who sold our blood — once to Qatar and once to Saudi and once to organizations that I don’t know their nature — without the slightest sense of shame. Imagine Samir Nashar and Zuheir Salem representing this great revolution — how strange!“Do you want to know my position?“I am against the US military intervention and I have my reasons, I , the son of this revolution, whether you like it or not.

“In a situation like ours, blood-traders and the Coalition should all admit that they are partners with the dictators, and they are just a copy of them and not a copy nor representative of the honesty of our revolution.

“I will say no more,

“You have to stand before the mirror, you who got paid for our blood, before you say facts we know about the fascist dictator and sectarian regime. But you should be neither fascist, dictator, nor sectarian if you want to be part of our revolution.

“Listen carefully:

“Tell me when did the invaders bring freedom?

“At the end I will never be in favour of any American intervention in our area, because I know them very well. They could have defended the values from day one of our revolution and could have helped us, but they waited till the country was destroyed.

“The fall of the regime will satisfy me, but I don’t want our revolution to be incomplete after all this blood. This is not a letter for history but a farewell letter to all my friends if I die. If I die amidst this shelling or for any other reason, I want my friends to bury me in an unknown grave that only my friends and my beloved will know its address.”

Also, from Syrian-British novelist Robin Yassin-Kassab, on “Intervention?”

“If the US-led West wished to invade and occupy Syria, or to engineer regime change from afar, it would have taken advantage of the two-and-a-half-year chaos in Syria to intervene long before now.” (More.)

Also, the Louisiana Channel, of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, just uploaded this video “Silence is Disgraceful, Too”:

source

August 30, 2013 0

Interview with Cornelius Castoriadis by Chris Marker (English Subtitles)

This interview with Castoriadis was conducted in 1989 by famed filmmaker Chris Marker for Marker’s own television series L’héritage de la chouette (“The Owl’s Legacy”). Eighty-one minutes long, the raw footage originally recorded in French has been translated into English (via easy-to-read subtitles) and edited anonymously as a public service. Here, Castoriadis lays out and examines the contributions of ancient Greece to questions of contemporary relevance relating to democracy, politics, philosophy, art, poetry, economic and social reorganization, and the creative chaos that underlies all existence.

July 17, 2013 0

Asylum? Edward Snowden’s Letters from Russia

July 14, 2013 0

End Game full length version

Get the DVD at: http://infowars-shop.stores.yahoo.net… For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world’s population, while enabling the “elites” to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity’s extermination: Operation ENDGAME.
Jones chronicles the history of the global elite’s bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest wars—creating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire. * Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world’s agenda and instigating World War III. * Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever. * Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation. * View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

July 12, 2013 0

Bolivian president’s treatment stirs up fury in Latin America

Jonathan Watts in Rio de Janeiro

The Guardian, Wednesday 3 July 2013 15.49 BST

The Bolivian president, Evo Morales, in Vienna airport. Photograph: Helmut Fohringer/AFP/Getty Images

Forced to land in Vienna, left waiting for 13 hours and only allowed to leave after agreeing to a search – presumably for the US whistleblower Edward Snowden – the treatment of Evo Morales has stirred up fury in Latin America, a region that has long bristled at the bullying of the US and double standards of its former colonial masters in Europe.

Bolivia has denounced what it calls a “kidnap” operation of its president by imperial powers that violates the Vienna convention and its national sovereignty. Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador and Uruguay have joined in the condemnation. Angry headlines have been splashed on newspapers across the region.

Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño Aroca, said his country would stand with Bolivia. “We will not allow this affront against a Latin American leader,” he tweeted.

The secretary general of the Organisation of American States, José Miguel Insulza, expressed his “profound displeasure” with the countries who refused to allow Morales’s plane through their airspace.

“Nothing justifies an action as disrespectful to the highest authority of a country,” Insulza said in a statement.

Peru reportedly called for an emergency meeting on Wednesday of another regional grouping, the Union of South American Nations (Unasur).

“Tomorrow is going to be a long and difficult day,” tweeted the Argentinian president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, on Tuesday night, adding that Morales had been treated with “impunity”. Venezuela is furious and the Uruguayan president, José Mujica, is also said to be indignant.

The United States has yet to comment, but the longer it remains silent, the stronger will be the suspicions that it leaned on France, Spain, Portugal and Italy to deny permission for Morales’s plane to fly through their airspace, in effect putting the hunt for a US whistleblower above international law and the rights of a president of a sovereign nation.

Several politicians and commentators in the region are already adding this action to a long list of interventions, invasions and “policing actions” by Latin America’s giant northern neighbour, along with the Monroe Doctrine, the annexation of half of Mexico, the Bay of Pigs invasion, support for Chile’s Augusto Pinochet and other dictators and the ousting of democratically elected leftist governments in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and elsewhere.

Europe has been accused of reopening historical scars by abetting in the detention of Latin America’s first indigenous president.

“Just as they did 500 years ago, foreign powers have once again mistreated and assaulted the Bolivian people,” the country’s vice-president, Álvaro García Linera, said.

Ecuador was set to provide further evidence of intrusiveness and interference at a press conference later on Wednesday, when the foreign minister said he would provide evidence of a bug that was discovered at the country’s London embassy, where the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been taking refuge for a year.

Ecuador had also looked like a likely destination for Snowden, though its president, Rafael Correa, appears to have cooled on the idea in recent days. Many attribute his change of tone to a phonecall from the US vice-president, Joe Biden, which reportedly included a reminder that Ecuador uses the US dollar as its currency. For some commentators, this was a veiled threat.

Conscious of the growing importance of the Latino vote in the US, the president, Barack Obama, has tried to bolster his reputation in the region by making immigration reform one of the priorities of his second term.

But his secretary of state, John Kerry, upset many in Latin America earlier this year, when he referred to the region as the US “backyard” – a term that has long been seen as a sign of US imperialistic tendencies. In response, Bolivia expelled USAid, a development agency.

Spain, France, Portugal and Italy reportedly denied permission for Morales’s plane to fly through their airspace, in effect forcing it to make an unscheduled stop in Vienna, where Austrian authorities inspected the plane.

“So many beautiful masks fell. As always, in times of crisis you learn the truth behind the speeches,” tweeted Patiño. He then praised a comment about the solidarity of Latin America, which has built closer regional ties in recent years. “Unasur today must prove to the European Union the true meaning of Latin American integration,” he wrote.

source

July 3, 2013 2

Robin Yassin-Kassab on Assadist worship and Alawi religion

my response to a friend who thinks that assad-worship is part of the alawi religion: was saddam hussain’s regime ‘sunni’ when it murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent iraqis, particularly shia? no, it wasn’t – it was a saddamist regime which had nothing to do with religion but which exploited religion and ignorant sunnis for its own divide and rule purposes. is the bahraini regime ‘sunni’ when it denies democratic rights to its people? no – it’s using religious divisions to keep itself in power. same in syria. i know alawis who are working for the revolution – people like samar yazbek, rasha omran, and so many who are working in silence or in secret to deliver food and medicine to the besieged areas.

it’s true that sunni areas are being hit particularly hard, but there are also thousands of christians, alawis, and ismailis who have been tortured and murdered. I agree that this is a savage regime killing mainly sunnis. but we shouldn’t be helping assad, khamenei and nasrallah to make this a sectarian war.

that’s exactly what they want. why? because assadism has almost no supporters – but there are millions of shia in the world. if they are fooled into believing that the revolution is not one for freedom for all but a war for extermination of minorities, then they will fight to defend assad, we have to fight this discourse, however hard it is.

we also have to show the west – which until now has done everything it can to prevent the syrians defending themselves – that this is not a Muslim civil war, but a popular revolution. let’s not fall into assad’s trap. then, as a matter of plain fact, the alawi religion (i’m not alawi, but i have studied it) is certainly very very far from orthodox Islam, but it does not involve worship of the assad family.

this is a blasphemy against the alawi religion. it is also a fact that the alawi ulema have been assassinated, imprisoned and silenced over the last four decades by the assad regime. this is the problem. the assads have tried to kill the alawi religion and replace it with worship of the assads.

from facebook

June 29, 2013 1

Mohammed Assaf wins Arab Idol

Jubilation among Palestinians as singer who grew up in refugee camp wins over voters

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 23 June 2013 04.27 BST

Link to video: Arab Idol: Mohammed Assaf wins talent searchPalestinian cities erupted in joy after the Gazan singer Mohammed Assaf won the Arab Idol singing contest final held in Beirut on Saturday night, providing a welcome break from conflict with Israel. The fresh-faced 22-year-old from humble roots in a refugee camp endeared millions of voting television viewers with his Palestinian patriotic anthems and folk songs. After watching Assaf’s victory from giant screens in the Gaza Strip and Israeli-occupied West Bank, tens of thousands of Palestinians set off fireworks, danced in the streets and blasted his music from cars idling in frantic traffic jams.

“This shows that Palestinians don’t just fight and struggle, but we rejoice and make great art,” said a beaming Awad Najib, a government employee, after a mass viewing outside the Ramallah presidential palace in the West Bank. Some Muslim clerics in Friday sermons had dismissed the pageant, saying its title encouraged idolatry and that people’s energies would be better spent confronting Israel’s occupation. Political activists too complained that the glitzy spectacle had little to do with the Palestinian plight. But most Palestinians would have none of this and Saturday’s revelry was like the end-of-Ramadan holiday combined with the World Cup final.

The scale of the celebrations easily outstripped most political or protest rallies of recent years and far exceeded those held after Palestinians gained non-member statehood in a vote at the UN general assembly in November 2012. Many political leaders, who have increasingly alienated Palestinians with their bickering, have sought to try to hitch a ride from Assaf’s galloping popularity. Some greying officials changed their Facebook profile pictures to his smiling face and spiked hair, urged people to text him their votes and praised his nationalist credentials.

“This win is a source of pride and a victory for our people on the road to achieving its dream of establishing an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” President Mahmoud Abbas said. Abbas was jolted this week by his prime minister’s surprise offer to resign and faces pressure from the US secretary of state, John Kerry, to jumpstart stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But for locals, Assaf was all and politics took a backseat. “In the middle of the political failures Assaf achieved something that made Palestinians everywhere feel hope was still possible,” said Imad Ahmed, a teacher from Gaza watching the show with his family at a beachfront restaurant. After the victory Assaf was named by the UN as its first youth ambassador to Palestinian refugee camps in the territories and neighbouring countries. He is expected to visit the West Bank to perform.

June 23, 2013 0